According to a conventional ultrasonic probing method (see patent document 1), a flaw in a probing target, for example, a steel material, is probed as follows. A narrowband wave having a high frequency of 1.0 MHz, 1.5 MHz or 2.0 MHz is input to a surface of the steel material in an oblique direction into a position right below the surface using an oblique probe usable both for transmission and receiving. Based on whether or not a reflected wave is received by the probe from the defect (so-called flaw) in the steel material in the vicinity of the pole, it is evaluated whether or not there is a flaw.
According to another ultrasonic probing method (see patent document 2), a transmission probe and a receiving probe are used instead of the oblique probe usable both for transmission and receiving, and it is evaluated whether or not there is a flaw by a so-called dual probe method.
However, both of the conventional methods only utilize the properties of the ultrasonic wave that the ultrasonic wave runs straight in the input direction thereof with a high directivity and that the ultrasonic wave is reflected, refracted or converted in mode at, for example, a border between different materials based on the Huygens' principle and the Snell's law. Therefore, these methods have the following problems.
1) According to the conventional methods, a high frequency vibration is used. Therefore, it is relatively difficult to probe a flaw in a probing target formed of a material having a large scattering attenuation such as cast iron or the like.
2) According to the conventional methods, probing is easily performed when a probing area is limited, for example, when a flaw in a welded section is to be probed. However, when a probing area is large, the ultrasonic wave transmission and receiving probes need to be moved for scanning in the entire probing area to each measurement point. This requires a huge number of measurement steps.
3) According to the conventional methods, when it is found whether there is a flaw or not, the determination on the sizing (detection of the width, height, size and the like of the flaw) relies on the ability of the measuring personnel. For this reason, individual differences are generated in sizing.
4) According to the conventional methods, a high frequency vibration is used. Therefore, the amount of vibration attenuated and lost inside the probing target is large. Although being effective for probing a flaw with a short probing length of about 100 mm, the methods are not usable to probe a defect (flaw) located at a long probing length.
Patent document 1: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2001-221784
Patent document 2: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2001-133444